FLOAT 100 · Art · No. 64

Trolley Hunters (Trolleys)

Three cavemen with spears creep up on a herd of empty supermarket carts: Banksy's joke about how far we have drifted from feeding ourselves debuted in a Los Angeles warehouse next to a painted elephant, and its signed edition of 150 is among the scarcer versions of one of his most traded prints.

Year: 2007
Maker: Banksy
By price in art: 66 of 100

Realized at auction · Nov 26, 2025$31,775A realized sale: somebody paid it.

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Artist: Banksy (British, anonymous)
Title: Trolleys, first titled Trolley Hunters
Date: Image 2006; print editions catalogued 2006-2007
Medium: Screenprint on Arches wove paper
Sheet: 56 x 76 cm (22 x 30 in)
This edition: 150 signed (alongside 500 unsigned)
Other editions: 750 signed Color; about 100 unsigned LA Edition; 28 signed Bethlehem Edition on end paper
Publisher: Pictures on Walls, London
Signed-edition auction record: $72,185 with fees, June 28, 2022
Original painting: Trolley Hunters, 2006, sold for $6,698,400 in New York in November 2021

Hunting in the supermarket age

The picture is a single gag, told without words. Three prehistoric hunters move in formation from left to right, stripped to silhouettes and carrying weapons. Ahead of them, standing in a bare landscape like antelope at a water hole, are three shopping carts. The carts are empty.

The target is consumer society: people living in cities with no way of growing or catching food, dependent on what big supermarket chains put on the shelves. One writer points out that the empty carts suggest a system that sustains itself rather than the people who use it.

Banksy made the original as a painting. Trolley Hunters, oil and emulsion on canvas, measures 137 by 214 cm and is inscribed '1 Aug 2006' on the canvas overlap.

Barely Legal

Trolleys was born at Barely Legal, the show Banksy staged in a Los Angeles warehouse on the weekend of September 16, 2006. It was billed as a 'three-day vandalised warehouse extravaganza.' Its centerpiece was a live elephant painted in pink and gold wallpaper, a comment on world poverty; after complaints from animal rights groups, the elephant appeared unpainted on the final day.

The show has been credited with turning an anonymous street artist from Bristol into a superstar. Los Angeles, a city built on image and consumption, was a natural stage for a print about shopping.

Six screenprints were made for the show: Trolleys, Grannies, Festival, Applause, Sale Ends and Morons. In the Barely Legal version, one caveman carries a club; in the later London editions he carries a hammer of wood and stone.

Four, or five, versions

Trolleys exists in more versions than almost any other Banksy print, and the sources do not agree on how to group them. One Banksy catalogue lists the standard Trolleys as 150 signed and 500 unsigned; a Los Angeles edition of about 100 unsigned prints plus 6 signed printer's proofs; a Color edition of 750 signed; and a Bethlehem Edition of 28 signed prints. Another source dates the first Los Angeles release to 2005 and describes the London publisher's 2007 releases as 750 signed prints in blue and yellow, 500 unsigned white prints, and 150 signed white prints with red details on the cart handles.

This page covers the signed edition of 150, the scarcest of the standard signed runs. All are printed on 56 by 76 cm sheets and were published by Pictures on Walls, the London print shop behind Banksy's early editions.

The Bethlehem Edition is the oddity. Its 28 prints were sold at Banksy's 2007 Santa's Ghetto pop-up and printed on end paper, the packaging that fine art paper is shipped in. Banksy compared it to children playing with the box instead of the toy.

How the signed 150 has traded

Very few signed impressions reach auction. One tracker records only eight auction sales of the standard signed edition since 2011, against 49 sales of the much larger Color edition since 2018. Number 86/150 sold in April 2011 for £3,840, about $6,265.

Prices rose with the whole Banksy market. Signed impressions sold for $23,120 in June 2018 and $32,120 in February 2019. During the 2021-2022 boom, number 77/150 brought £50,000 in London in December 2021, and number 51/150 set the edition's auction record in France on June 28, 2022: €68,224, about $72,185.

The most recent signed result on record came in Australia on November 26, 2025, when number 102/150 sold for AUD 49,090, about $31,775. For comparison, the Color edition's peak was HK$1,008,000 in Hong Kong in December 2020, and the original Trolley Hunters canvas sold for $6,698,400 with fees in New York on November 18, 2021, against an estimate of $5 million to $7 million.

Carts everywhere

Shopping carts are a running theme for Banksy. In Show Me the Monet (2005), one floats in Monet's water lily pond; that painting sold for £7.5 million in 2020. In 2005 he hung a marker drawing of a figure pushing a cart in the British Museum, where it went unnoticed for three days; it later appeared in a 2018 exhibition on dissent.

Trolleys remains one of the most liquid Banksy images at auction. It even attracted a crime of its own: a Color impression was stolen from an unauthorized Banksy exhibition in Toronto in 2018.

The numbers

Medium: Screenprint on Arches wove paper
Dimensions: Sheet 56 x 76 cm (22 x 30 in)
Edition size: 150 signed; 500 unsigned in the same run
Related editions: 750 signed Color; about 100 unsigned LA Edition plus 6 signed printer's proofs; 28 signed Bethlehem Edition
Publisher: Pictures on Walls, London
Original painting: Trolley Hunters, 2006, oil and emulsion on canvas, 137 x 214 cm

Timeline

Aug 1, 2006
Banksy dates the original Trolley Hunters canvas.
Sep 16, 2006
Barely Legal opens in a Los Angeles warehouse; Trolley Hunters is shown with five other new prints.
2007
Pictures on Walls releases further editions, including the 750 signed Color version.
2007
The 28-print Bethlehem Edition on end paper is sold at Santa's Ghetto.
2007
The original canvas is acquired by the owner who would sell it in 2021.
Apr 6, 2011
Signed impression 86/150 sells for £3,840.
2018
A Color impression is stolen from an unauthorized Banksy show in Toronto.
Dec 4, 2020
A Color impression sets that edition's record in Hong Kong: HK$1,008,000.
Nov 18, 2021
The original Trolley Hunters painting sells in New York for $6,698,400.
Dec 7, 2021
Signed impression 77/150 sells in London for £50,000.
Jun 28, 2022
Signed impression 51/150 sets the edition record in France: €68,224.
Nov 26, 2025
Signed impression 102/150 sells in Australia for AUD 49,090.

The world in 2007

Jan 1, 2007
Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union.
Apr 16, 2007
A gunman kills 32 people at Virginia Tech.
Jun 27, 2007
Gordon Brown succeeds Tony Blair as British prime minister.
Jun 29, 2007
Apple releases the first iPhone in the United States.
Aug 9, 2007
A French bank freezes withdrawals from three funds exposed to subprime loans, an early sign of the financial crisis.
Dec 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated.

Price record

$1,000$10,000$100,000

Date	Price	Kind
Apr 6, 2011	$6,265	Sold at auctionImpression 86/150, U.K. GBP 3,840 with fees.
Jun 25, 2018	$23,120	Sold at auctionSigned /150, U.K. GBP 17,420 with fees (hammer GBP 13,000).
Feb 27, 2019	$32,120	Sold at auctionSigned /150, U.K. GBP 24,120 with fees (hammer GBP 18,000).
Jun 26, 2019	$27,190	Sold at auctionSigned /150, U.K. GBP 21,440 with fees (hammer GBP 16,000).
Dec 7, 2021	$67,000	Sold at auctionImpression 77/150, U.K. GBP 50,000 with fees.
May 28, 2022	$51,565	Sold at auctionSigned /150, Japan. JPY 6,555,000.
Jun 28, 2022	$72,185	Sold at auctionImpression 51/150, France; auction record for the signed edition. EUR 68,224.
Nov 26, 2025	$31,775	Sold at auctionImpression 102/150, Australia. AUD 49,090.

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Trolley Hunters (Trolleys) is number 66 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (64 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

Trolleys debuted at a show whose star attraction was a live elephant painted to match the wallpaper.
Only about 100 of the 500 Barely Legal prints were released, and the plates were destroyed after the show, per one source.
The caveman's weapon changed between editions: a club in the Los Angeles version, a wood-and-stone hammer in the later ones.
The 28 Bethlehem prints were printed on the wrapping that art paper comes in.
Prints from the Barely Legal set were originally offered at $500 each, per one source.

How this page is made

The figure: One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
Realized or not: A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
The story: Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 3, 2026.
Archive: Oct 5, 2026